# How did rockets reach space?

An episode of [Science for Kids / Science's Not Boring: The Kids Science Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1896928296), 12 Aug 2026, 13 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2624612/episodes/19602120-how-did-rockets-reach-space.mp3

Blast off on an unbelievable adventure into the most powerful machines in the entire universe! Have you ever wondered how a spaceship breaks free from Earth’s gravity? Join Mira and Finn on Science is Not Boring as they uncover the mind-blowing secrets of rockets! Discover what Escape Velocity is and why a rocket has to travel a staggering 25,053 miles per hour—50 times faster than a commercial airplane—just to reach the stars. You won't believe the wild space facts we have packed inside! Find out how the massive Saturn V rocket burned 20 tons of fuel every single second (that's the weight of four adult elephants!) and created a roaring fire so hot it could easily melt steel. Learn the genius science trick of using freezing cold liquid to stop the engine from melting, and why dropping empty fuel tanks out of the sky is the smartest way to travel. Plus, find out how the International Space Station stays in orbit by literally falling and missing the ground! Fasten your seatbelts, space cadets, because this high-speed episode is guaranteed to send your brain straight into orbit!

## Transcript

[0:46] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Science Is Not Boring by Kidopoly.com.
[0:49] SPEAKER_00: I'm Mira.
[0:50] SPEAKER_00: And I'm Finn.
[0:51] SPEAKER_00: We don't have any special shout-outs today, but we are blasting off into one of the most powerful topics in the entire universe.
[1:00] SPEAKER_00: What are we talking about today?
[1:01] SPEAKER_00: Tell me! Rockets! Imagine building a machine that burns 20 tonnes of liquid fuel.
[1:08] SPEAKER_00: That is the exact weight of four adult elephants.
[1:12] SPEAKER_00: Every single second.
[1:14] SPEAKER_00: Wait, four whole elephants of fuel a second?
[1:18] SPEAKER_00: That's crazy! And the crazy part is, it has to burn that much just to fight gravity.
[1:24] SPEAKER_01: Gravity is strong, but four elephants a second strong?
[1:28] SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
[1:29] SPEAKER_00: Today we're discovering how rockets work, how they go astonishingly fast, and how we escape the Earth's pull to reach deep space and other planets.
[1:39] SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's start at the very beginning.
[1:41] SPEAKER_01: Why do we need to burn 20 tons of fuel every second?
[1:46] SPEAKER_00: Because of gravity.
[1:47] SPEAKER_00: Earth's mass is constantly pulling everything toward its centre.
[1:51] SPEAKER_00: If you jump up, you fall right back down.
[1:55] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's just normal life.
[1:57] SPEAKER_01: We can't just float away.
[1:59] SPEAKER_00: Exactly! But if you want a spaceship to leave Earth forever and never fall back, it has to hit something called escape velocity.
[2:07] SPEAKER_01: Escape velocity?
[2:09] SPEAKER_01: That sounds like a superhero power.
[2:11] SPEAKER_00: What is it?
[2:12] SPEAKER_00: It's the exact critical speed you need to go to break completely free from Earth's gravity.
[2:18] SPEAKER_00: And for our planet, that speed is exactly 25,053 miles per hour.
[2:25] SPEAKER_01: 25,000 miles per hour?
[2:28] SPEAKER_01: A fast car on the highway only goes like 70 miles per hour.
[2:32] SPEAKER_00: Right.
[2:33] SPEAKER_00: And a commercial airplane only flies around 500 miles per hour.
[2:38] SPEAKER_00: Rockets have to go 50 times faster than a jet just to escape.
[2:42] SPEAKER_01: How did anyone figure out how to make something go that fast?
[2:46] SPEAKER_00: It took a lot of experimenting.
[2:48] SPEAKER_00: In 1926, a scientist named Robert Goddard launched the very first liquid-fuelled rocket in a snowy field in Auburn, Massachusetts.
[2:58] SPEAKER_00: Did it go all the way to space?
[3:00] SPEAKER_00: Nope.
[3:01] SPEAKER_00: Goddard's rocket was only 10 feet tall, and it flew a grand total of 41 feet into the air.
[3:08] SPEAKER_00: 41 feet?
[3:09] SPEAKER_01: That's barely higher than a two-story house.
[3:12] SPEAKER_01: I could almost throw a baseball that high.
[3:14] SPEAKER_00: True, and the flight only lasted two and a half seconds.
[3:18] SPEAKER_00: But it proved a massive scientific concept.
[3:22] SPEAKER_00: Liquid fuel could provide the incredible thrust needed to fight gravity.
[3:26] SPEAKER_01: I bet he had no idea what that little 41-foot rocket would lead to.
[3:30] SPEAKER_00: He really didn't.
[3:32] SPEAKER_00: Fast forward 40 years later, Anassa built the Saturn V rocket to take astronauts to the Moon.
[3:38] SPEAKER_00: How big did they get?
[3:40] SPEAKER_01: Bigger than a house?
[3:41] SPEAKER_00: Way bigger.
[3:43] SPEAKER_00: The Saturn V was 363 feet tall.
[3:47] SPEAKER_00: That is taller than the entire Statue of Liberty, base included.
[3:53] SPEAKER_00: Whoa! And it was entirely full of fuel?
[3:56] SPEAKER_00: Almost.
[3:57] SPEAKER_00: Fully loaded, it weighed 6.2 million pounds.
[4:02] SPEAKER_00: That's as heavy as a navy destroyer ship.
[4:05] SPEAKER_01: How do you even lift 6.2 million pounds straight up into the sky?
[4:09] SPEAKER_00: By creating the biggest, most powerful controlled fire in human history.
[4:15] SPEAKER_00: The exhaust blasting out of the massive engines at the bottom reached 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
[4:22] SPEAKER_01: 6,000 degrees?
[4:24] SPEAKER_01: But wait, doesn't steel melt at like 2,500 degrees?
[4:30] SPEAKER_00: You are exactly right.
[4:32] SPEAKER_00: The fire was literally hot enough to melt the rocket's own metal engines into a puddle in seconds.
[4:39] SPEAKER_01: So why didn't it melt?
[4:41] SPEAKER_01: Did they invent some kind of magic space metal?
[4:44] SPEAKER_00: Nope.
[4:45] SPEAKER_00: They used regenerative cooling.
[4:47] SPEAKER_00: The bottom engines pumped room temperature fuel to cool their walls.
[4:51] SPEAKER_00: But the upper stages used liquid hydrogen at minus 423 degrees Fahrenheit.
[4:59] SPEAKER_01: That's colder than Antarctica in winter.
[5:02] SPEAKER_00: Way colder! For those upper stages, they pump the freezing liquid through hundreds of tiny pipes built right into the walls of the engine nozzle.
[5:12] SPEAKER_01: So the icy cold fuel cools the metal walls down right before it gets sprayed into the engine and set on fire.
[5:19] SPEAKER_00: Yes, the freezing fuel keeps the metal from melting while absorbing the heat to prepare itself for combustion.
[5:27] SPEAKER_01: That is the smartest thing I have ever heard.
[5:30] SPEAKER_01: It's like using your own drinking water to put out a fire on your clothes.
[5:34] SPEAKER_00: It really is brilliant, but there is a massive problem with building giant rockets.
[5:39] SPEAKER_00: What's the problem?
[5:41] SPEAKER_00: The fire?
[5:42] SPEAKER_00: The weight! Fuel is incredibly heavy.
[5:46] SPEAKER_00: To burn 20 tons a second, you need a giant tank.
[5:50] SPEAKER_00: But you also need more fuel just to lift the fuel you're carrying.
[5:54] SPEAKER_00: That sounds like a terrible trap.
[5:56] SPEAKER_01: The heavier it gets, the more fuel you need.
[5:59] SPEAKER_00: Exactly! Rocket scientists call it the tyranny of the rocket equation.
[6:05] SPEAKER_00: So they came up with an amazing solution called staging.
[6:09] SPEAKER_01: Staging?
[6:10] SPEAKER_01: Like acting on a theatre stage.
[6:13] SPEAKER_00: Not quite.
[6:14] SPEAKER_00: The rocket is divided into separate sections, or stages, stacked on top of each other.
[6:20] SPEAKER_00: Why do they stack them?
[6:21] SPEAKER_00: Because when the enormous bottom tank runs out of fuel, it turns into a giant, heavy, empty metal tube that just slows you down.
[6:31] SPEAKER_00: So the rocket literally drops it.
[6:34] SPEAKER_01: Wait, they just let a huge piece of the rocket fall off in mid-air and plunge to Earth.
[6:40] SPEAKER_00: Yes! Explosive bolts fire, the empty stage falls away into the ocean, and the next set of engines ignites to keep pushing the lighter rocket higher.
[6:50] SPEAKER_01: So they shed the dead weight.
[6:52] SPEAKER_01: By the time they reach space, is there much rocket left?
[6:56] SPEAKER_00: Very little.
[6:57] SPEAKER_00: The combined spacecraft modules made it to the moon, but only the tiny command module carrying the astronauts made it back to Earth.
[7:06] SPEAKER_00: That's wild.
[7:07] SPEAKER_01: But what if you don't want to leave Earth completely?
[7:09] SPEAKER_01: What if you just want to go to the International Space Station?
[7:12] SPEAKER_00: Then you don't need to hit the full 25,000 mph escape velocity.
[7:18] SPEAKER_00: The space station orbits about 250 miles above Earth.
[7:22] SPEAKER_00: How fast do they have to go to stay up there?
[7:25] SPEAKER_00: They travel at 17,500 miles per hour.
[7:30] SPEAKER_00: That's about 5 miles every single second.
[7:34] SPEAKER_00: 5 miles a second?
[7:36] SPEAKER_00: But why don't they fall back down to Earth?
[7:38] SPEAKER_00: They actually are falling, but they are moving sideways so incredibly fast that the curve of the Earth drops away beneath them.
[7:47] SPEAKER_00: They literally fall and miss the ground.
[7:50] unknown: Haha!
[7:50] SPEAKER_01: I can't believe orbiting is just missing the ground on purpose.
[7:55] SPEAKER_01: That's hilarious and terrifying.
[7:57] SPEAKER_01: It's pure physics!
[7:59] SPEAKER_00: But rockets don't just put people in orbit, they push robotic probes even faster to explore the darkest corners of the solar system.
[8:08] SPEAKER_01: Like where?
[8:09] SPEAKER_01: Give me some numbers!
[8:10] SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about the Voyager 1 space probe.
[8:13] SPEAKER_00: It launched in 1977 and used rockets and gravity to fling itself into deep space.
[8:20] SPEAKER_00: How fast is it going now?
[8:22] SPEAKER_00: Is it still moving?
[8:23] SPEAKER_00: It's travelling at an astonishing 38,000 miles per hour.
[8:27] SPEAKER_00: And it has travelled over 15 billion miles away from Earth.
[8:32] SPEAKER_00: It has officially left our solar system.
[8:35] SPEAKER_01: 15 billion miles! Wait, I just realised something weird.
[8:40] SPEAKER_01: Do rockets even work in deep space?
[8:42] SPEAKER_01: Why wouldn't they?
[8:43] SPEAKER_01: Because there's no air in space.
[8:45] SPEAKER_01: There's no oxygen to burn, and there's no air for the rocket fire to push against to move forward.
[8:50] SPEAKER_00: That is a brilliant question.
[8:52] SPEAKER_00: First, rockets carry their own liquid oxygen in a separate tank, so they can burn fuel without outside air.
[9:00] SPEAKER_00: Oh, that makes sense.
[9:01] SPEAKER_00: But what about pushing?
[9:02] SPEAKER_00: They don't push on the air outside.
[9:05] SPEAKER_00: That's the craziest part.
[9:07] SPEAKER_00: According to Isaac Newton's third law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
[9:12] SPEAKER_00: So how does that make the rocket move?
[9:15] SPEAKER_00: When the massive explosion of gas blasts backward out of the rocket nozzle, that force pushes the physical rocket forward in the opposite direction.
[9:25] SPEAKER_01: So it's like if I was wearing roller skates and I threw a really heavy bowling ball as hard as I could.
[9:30] SPEAKER_01: Exactly!
[9:31] SPEAKER_00: Pushing the heavy ball forward would make your body roll backward on the skates.
[9:36] SPEAKER_01: So a rocket is basically just throwing fire and gas backward as hard as it can, so it gets pushed forward into the universe.
[9:43] SPEAKER_00: You got it! It pushes on itself.
[9:46] SPEAKER_00: And that simple idea is how we explore Mars, fly past Pluto, and discover the secrets of the cosmos.
[9:53] SPEAKER_00: Alright, Finn, it's that time! Are you ready for the rocket-powered quiz?
[9:58] SPEAKER_01: My brain is fully fuelled and ready for liftoff.
[10:01] SPEAKER_01: Bring it on.
[10:02] SPEAKER_00: First question.
[10:04] SPEAKER_00: What is the exact speed called escape velocity for Earth?
[10:11] SPEAKER_00: Next one.
[10:13] SPEAKER_00: How much fuel did the massive Saturn V rocket burn every single second?
[10:21] SPEAKER_00: Question three.
[10:23] SPEAKER_00: What was the exact temperature of the exhaust blasting out of the Saturn V engines?
[10:32] SPEAKER_00: Here's number four.
[10:34] SPEAKER_00: What do scientists call it when a rocket drops its empty fuel tanks to lose weight?
[10:42] SPEAKER_00: Last question.
[10:44] SPEAKER_00: How fast does the International Space Station travel to stay in orbit?
[10:52] SPEAKER_00: Great job, Space Cadets! Let's see how you did.
[10:57] SPEAKER_00: The first answer is escape velocity for Earth is 25,053 miles per hour.
[11:04] SPEAKER_00: For question two, the Saturn V burned 20 tonnes of fuel or the weight of four elephants every single second.
[11:14] SPEAKER_00: Number three, the answer is the exhaust temperature was a scorching 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
[11:22] SPEAKER_00: Question 4.
[11:24] SPEAKER_00: Dropping the empty fuel tanks is called staging.
[11:28] SPEAKER_00: And the final answer is the International Space Station travels at 17,500 miles per hour to keep falling and missing the ground.
[11:38] SPEAKER_01: Man, rockets are seriously the most extreme machines humans have ever built.
[11:43] SPEAKER_01: The fact that they can throw enough fire to push a building into space is mind-blowing.
[11:49] SPEAKER_00: It really is.
[11:50] SPEAKER_00: I think my favourite part is the regenerative cooling.
[11:54] SPEAKER_00: Using freezing fuel to stop the engine from melting is the ultimate science hack.
[12:00] SPEAKER_01: If you think rockets and space travel are out of this world, blast down to the bottom of the page and leave us a five-star review.
[12:08] SPEAKER_01: Just scroll down and tap the stars to help other kids find the show.
[12:12] SPEAKER_00: Yes, please do.
[12:14] SPEAKER_00: And don't forget to head over to our site kidopoly.com.
[12:18] SPEAKER_00: We have tons of awesome learning games, experiments and activities there waiting for you.
[12:24] SPEAKER_01: Plus, if you want a shout out on the show or just want to tell us your favourite space fact, send us an email at hello at kidopoly.com.
[12:33] SPEAKER_01: We read every single one.
[12:35] SPEAKER_00: Keep exploring and keep asking bold questions.
[12:39] SPEAKER_00: See you next time on Science is not boring.

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